Beth Davidow puts patient safety at the center of private practice
Bottom line
Version 1 — Brief
Instinct has put a fresh spotlight on veterinary patient safety with a May 21, 2026, Pick the Brain podcast episode featuring Beth Davidow, DVM, co-founder and CEO of Timberline Veterinary Emergency & Specialty. In the episode, Davidow and host Caleb Frankel discuss how private practices can strengthen safety protocols through system-based approaches, practical workflows, and a stronger safety culture, rather than relying on individual vigilance alone. The conversation lands as Instinct continues to frame patient safety as a core product and practice theme, including a July 22, 2026, blog post outlining new safety safeguards in its clinical software. (instinct.vet)
Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, the message is familiar but increasingly urgent: medication and communication errors remain among the most common safety events in practice, and experts continue to argue that blame-based responses make those risks harder to surface and fix. Davidow’s background in patient safety and quality, along with broader industry commentary from dvm360 and published research, reinforces a practical takeaway for private practice leaders: safer care depends on systems such as checklists, clearer communication, auditability, and psychological safety for teams to speak up. (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
What to watch: Expect continued attention on how software, checklists, and team culture can work together as private practices look for concrete ways to reduce preventable errors. (instinct.vet)
Version 2 — Full analysis
Patient safety is getting renewed attention in private veterinary practice through a new Instinct podcast episode featuring Beth Davidow, DVM, co-founder and CEO of Timberline Veterinary Emergency & Specialty. Published May 21, 2026, the episode centers on a practical question many hospital leaders are asking: how to build safer systems in everyday practice, especially when teams are stretched and clinical complexity is rising. (instinct.vet)
The discussion didn’t emerge in a vacuum. Davidow has worked publicly on quality and safety issues for years, including lectures on responding to adverse events and implementing checklists, a 2021 peer-reviewed article on communicating patient quality and safety in hospitals, and ongoing writing through her Veterinary Idealist platform. Her own May 22, 2026, blog post linking to the podcast also notes that Timberline, the hospital she co-founded three years earlier, has grown quickly and recently moved into a larger facility with surgery, oncology, internal medicine, a community blood bank, and 24/7 emergency and critical care. (vetidealist.com)
Instinct’s summary of the episode is brief, but it frames the conversation around system-based error prevention, practical safety protocols, and resources for hospital leaders trying to improve safety culture. That framing aligns with Instinct’s broader recent messaging: on July 22, 2026, the company highlighted four new safety-related workflow safeguards in its software, including weight-change alerts for medication dosing, consolidated medication views, role-based controlled substance permissions, and more detailed chart audit logs. Taken together, the podcast and product messaging suggest a wider industry push to embed safety thinking into both culture and clinical infrastructure. (instinct.vet)
That emphasis is backed by the available evidence. A retrospective analysis published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science found about 5.3 reported safety incidents per 1,000 patient visits across three veterinary hospitals, with drug errors and communication failures the most common categories; 15.2% of incidents resulted in patient harm, and a small share led to permanent morbidity or death. More recent PubMed-indexed work has continued to examine patient safety events across varied veterinary settings, while a 2024 review on anesthesia medication errors underscored how often medication mistakes appear in the literature. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
Industry voices are also converging around the same idea: errors are rarely just about one person making one bad decision. In dvm360 coverage, Theresa Cosper-Roberts argued for destigmatizing mistakes and building a “just culture” so team members feel safe admitting errors and questioning questionable orders. In separate 2026 commentary, anesthesiologist Lydia Love, DVM, DACVAA, said practices should assume human error will happen and use tools such as psychological safety, checklists, and cognitive aids to catch problems before they reach patients. (dvm360.com)
Why it matters: For private practices, the practical implication is that patient safety can’t sit only in training manuals or individual competence. It has to show up in how medications are reviewed, how handoffs are managed, who can access controlled substances, how records are audited, and whether technicians, associates, and support staff feel safe speaking up. That matters not only for patient outcomes, but also for team retention and wellbeing, since the literature and industry commentary both note the emotional toll adverse events can take on clinicians and staff. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
Davidow’s role makes the episode especially relevant for independent and privately led hospitals. She’s not speaking only as an academic or commentator, but as a hospital co-founder managing growth while trying to embed quality into operations. For veterinary leaders, that gives the conversation more operational weight: this is less about abstract safety theory and more about what it looks like to build safer care into a functioning, expanding practice. That’s an inference based on her hospital leadership role, lecture history, and the themes highlighted in the episode summary. (vetidealist.com)
What to watch: The next phase will likely be less about whether patient safety matters and more about which interventions private practices can actually implement, measure, and sustain, from checklist use and event review processes to software-based safeguards and leadership training. Expect more attention on concrete workflow changes, especially as vendors and hospital leaders alike try to translate safety culture into daily clinical operations. (instinct.vet)